I’ve owned a radio with SSB and CW reception at least since I was 17 years old back in 1967, starting with the Lafayette Radio Electronics KT-340 I built from a kit.

I got into collecting shortwave radios a decade or so ago, and some of them had SSB that I don’t remember much about, including the Grundig G4000A, Grundig G5, Sangean ATS-505, and Grundig G3. They’re all sold now. Today I have several different SSB options, and that is the topic of this article.
Acronyms:
- BFO – Beat Frequency Oscillator
- CW – Carrier Wave
- SSB – Single Sideband
- LSB – Lower Sideband
- USB – Upper Sideband
- OSB – Oriented Strand Board
Single Sideband
SSB transmissions are used by amateur radio operators, marine communications, weather broadcasts and commercial radio operations. I’m primarily an international shortwave broadcast listener, but I occasionally listen to SSB, and at least some international broadcasting is on SSB.
A typical AM radio signal consists of a carrier wave that is in the center of the channel, and two sidebands carrying the audio content, one on a lower frequency (LSB) and one with higher (USB). The carrier in the middle carries no information, and the upper and lower sidebands each carry the same information. SSB saves energy by omitting the carrier and one sideband, and saves bandwidth with a channel only half as wide. It’s an elegant scheme, but it takes special equipment to decode it. SSB capability adds to the cost of radio equipment and it adds to the complexity of operation. CW has only the center carrier frequency with no sidebands and the same technology that allows reconstituting an SSB transmission also can generate a tone when detecting CW.
I’ll go over the operational characteristics of each of my SSB-enabled radios, and provide samples of SSB reception on that radio.
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